Let's Pretend This Never Happened (39 page)

Victor and I are having a huge argument about whether or not to feed the foxen. Victor says yes, because they’re adorable and—according to the neighbors—are quite tame. I say no, because we have a fat little pug who likes to frolic outside occasionally and I don’t want to see him eaten. I thought we were on the same page about the fox, but then Victor went and threw an apple at it.
And I was all,
“What the fuck? We don’t feed the foxen,”
and he said, “I was throwing the apple at it
to chase it away
,” but Victor is a tremendous liar, and he didn’t go to pick up the apple, probably because he knows that foxen love apple cider. Also, everything I know about foxen I learned from
Fantastic Mr. Fox
, which was a great movie, but I suspect was not
entirely
fact-driven. This is probably all obvious even without the explanation.

Actual fox in my backyard. Looking for cider, I assume.

The foxen have not given up and hang around the backyard like a pack of loitering teenagers who need to get a damn job. I scream,
“Get off my lawn,”
but they just look at me inquisitively and roll over on their backs like they want their tummies scratched.
I am not scratching your tummies, foxen.

Victor has fallen for their clever ploys and is sneaking food out to the backyard so he can feed them. Because Victor thinks I’m stupid. He goes through the fridge and carefully pulls out perfectly good sausages and eggs and loudly exclaims that they’ve gone bad, and then he throws them out the back door and watches for movement. He says he’s “composting,” but I’ve called him on his bullshit.
“You can’t feed them,”
I explain again. “That’s like chumming for foxen. I’m not going to
bait the hole
and then put Barnaby Jones Pickles out there. We’ll come out to see a fox chewing on the end of an empty leash.”

“BUT I WANT TO SEE ONE UP CLOSE,” Victor yells.

“They look like cats,” I say. “Like grayish, plotting cats.” He refused to believe me, so the next day we drove past a buzzard eating one on the side of the road, and I was all, “LOOK! FOX!” Then I smugly said, “
There.
Now
you’ve seen one. Not that exciting, is it?” And Victor pointed out that the dead animal was a cat, and I was like, “
Exactly.
THAT’S HOW ALIKE THEY LOOK.” Also, it might have actually been a cat. It’s hard to tell what buzzards are eating when you drive past them at sixty miles an hour.

The foxen have got to go. Barnaby Jones Pickles seems to think they’re friendly kitties and keeps trying to run over to them to play. Luckily his dog run goes only so far, so the foxen just stand beyond his grasp and stare at him patiently, like he’s someone’s child who needs to be running along now. They ignore him and don’t seem to be a threat, but at this point I’m a little embarrassed at Barnaby’s exuberance and desperately obvious desire to play with foxen, who clearly think they’re better than him. Those foxen are being assholes and I will not stand for their attitude.

My friend Karen told me that when they have a fox problem in England, the man of the house just pees all around the perimeter, because there’s something in male urine that scares the shit out of foxes for some reason. It seems legit, so I tell Victor that I need him to pee in a circle around our house to protect the dog. Victor walks out of the room and locks himself in his office. I can almost
hear
him shaking his head through the door. In retrospect, I probably could have started with more context.

I was just reading this chapter to a friend and she stopped me and said, “Wait. Didn’t Barnaby die in the last chapter? I’m so confused. Why are you trying to protect your dead dog?” So I’m going to pop in here again to point out (
again
) that this part all happened before Barnaby died. I wasn’t trying to protect my dead zombie dog from judgmental, loitering foxen.
Because that would be crazy.

It’s been days and the foxen seem to love sleeping just out of reach of Barnaby. Victor says this just shows how tame they are, but I’m pretty sure they’re just trying to give him some sort of airborne fox disease. “JUST GO
PEE!” I scream desperately at Victor.
“If you loved Barnaby Jones you would be peeing all OVER him right now.”

Victor looked up. “Do you ever even listen to the things you say out loud?”

“Well,
I try not to
,” I admitted. “But in this case?
I’m right.
You need to go pee all over the backyard. And possibly the front yard. And on the dog.”

Victor shook his head. “I’m not peeing in the yard. We don’t have a fence.
That’s how you get arrested.
I don’t even
have
that much pee.”

“YOU KNOW WHAT?” I said, my arms crossed angrily. “
FINE.
I’m
trying to save our dog, and
you’re
hoarding pee. PEE HOARDER.”

“I’m not
HOARDING
pee,” Victor yelled. “I’m flushing it down the toilet. WHERE IT BELONGS.”

“You’re WASTING IT.”

“You’re
supposed
to waste it. THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED ‘
WASTE.
’”

“Great,” I answered. “I’m sure Barnaby Jones will be very comforted knowing that he died of fox disease
because of semantics
.”

I called my mom to ask whether Daddy could drive a few hours to come pee around my house for protection, but she said he couldn’t, because it’s a really busy season for taxidermy. But she said if I “really needed it” she could probably mail me some. I considered it, but then said no, because first of all,
that is a package I don’t ever want to sign for
, and second, because I can already predict that Victor will be all pissed off (no pun intended) that I asked my father for help protecting us from foxen, and then Victor will be all, “
I
AM THE ALPHA MALE IN THIS HOUSE AND NO ONE IS PEEING ON IT BUT ME.” Then the next time my dad comes over they’ll end up in a pissing contest.
Literally.
Except Victor is too competitive and he’d probably push it too far and would be like, “Oh, yeah? Forget pee;
I’ll throw up everywhere!
” and I’ll be all, “Your overachievement is gross.” We never had these problems when we lived in the suburbs.